@Beat Kaufmann said:

PS The DS Cellos seem to have a problem with legato-trills... a bit a strange sound?

I worked too fast (about one hour with video). As well as William remarked, I should have used the performance trills.

Like all VSL's colletions, the DS takes time to fully exploit. The humanization tools (time and pitch) can achieve very good results faster, but less finely that when using  dedicated tracks to each of the instrumentalists. Everyone has their own priorities and needs. For my part, I tried all sorts of combinations and I am impressed by the potential of the DS to add "dimension" (thickness, granularity, a less polished sound, imperfections, etc.) to other collections of VSL which remains nevertheless quite essential (a starting point as wrote William)

Claude

@Beat Kaufmann said:

In a fast part I could chose spiccato for 4 players and staccato for the other 4 players - this combined with multiple triggering could give an even more real ensemble sound.

What do you think?

Of course, this would be possible, but doing so in general would lead to a such huge amount of work, that it in the end might be cheaper to hire a chamber orchestra to record one's music...

In fact, the individual players sound so different from each other, that it is not necessary to use different articulations. Best way probably is to copy one miditrack for multiple instruments, then hear each player solo'd. When an articulation sounds odd at a specific point, use another just for that individual player.

I made a short example to demonstrate the different sound of the 8 violins - you hear the same phrase played by each of them seperate, then all 8 together. It's all dry whithout any reverb added, so you can apply your favourite room.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mey1ppt9crz66oj/Dimension%20Violins.mp3?dl=0

@Beat Kaufmann said:

The way I play with samples

When I produce a piece of music I don't use the samples because of their names but because of their sounds.

So sometimes I chose spiccato instead of staccato just because it sounds even more "groovy" or so.

So if I understand DS the right way each player could play another articulation:

Transated to the production

In a fast part I could chose spiccato for 4 players and staccato for the other 4 players - this combined with multiple triggering could give an even more real ensemble sound.

What do you think?

I have only the Standard library, so the articulations tend to sound significantly different from one another, for the short articulations at least. If you hired a real 8-player ensemble and they were playing so differently from one another, you would not think this is good, you would think, these guys need to practice more. So I haven't been inclined to try.

When you mix Chamber with Solo, playing the same line, do you mix articulations? Your results sound great, of course, so if you are doing this, I'll maybe try it with DS.

Hi BachRules

@BachRules said:

...When you mix Chamber with Solo, playing the same line, do you mix articulations? Your results sound great, of course, so if you are doing this, I'll maybe try it with DS.

As I mentiond above I do not chose articulations by name but by their sounds. And of course when I selected them for the chamberstrings I copy the "articulation controll notes" in a first step to the solo violin(s) but then I check the whole track again and often I change articulations...

Those who own full libraries can confirm that for example portato long/short notes not do have the same length with every instrument.

Nevertheless, I don't know any other libraries which are so compatible between instruments as those from VSL are.

Further:

I prepair each instrument in a way that it also could be heard as a soloist.I treat it so that it sounds as natural as possible - even if it is an "unimportant" instrument in the context.

This uses a lot of work and time but only the sum of all these little tweaks will lead to a good result.

If you know the Pareto-Rule "80% of the work is done within 20% of the time" then you know that the rest (20%) will need the other 80% of the time.

I normally try to find an acceptable compromise.

You probably know the demos of "Jay Bacal". Most of his demos seem to be 100% - jobs.

I need 1 day for 1min. music (for an orchestra with chamber size). incl. Mastering etc.

I don't know Jays average time value for 1 minute. 

Beat

@Beat Kaufmann said:

I prepair each instrument in a way that it also could be heard as a soloist.

That is a good point.  If you make even a secondary viola chordal accompaniment sound like what you hear live players doing it adds greatly to the naturalness.  And this is on parts that live players themselves would be bored by.   As a sample performer you cannot be as bored as they are in reality by less-than-spectacular parts. 

ALso, I really agree on the compatibility between different but similar instruments within VSL.  This is one of the remarkable, great aspects of the library in how you can totally change an orchestration simply by substituting the same articulation names for a different instrument.  It is a wonderful way to experiment with orchestration by the way.  For example,  I recently discovered that the bass trumpet sounded better, in fact perfect, on the third horn part of a piece I was recording than an actual third horn part.  I would never have thought this in a live situation or in a written score.  It is pure experimentation which is allowed by this consistency across instuments that VSL has.  It is even more consistent within instrument groups such as the strings.  

Here, you can originally record an entire string orchestra performance, with the biggest sounds such as Appassionata and Orchestral, and then create a completely different articulation groupp with Chamber and Sol simply by exchanging articulation names, and almost no tweaking because of the methodical sampling/naming of articulations.  You can then add that smalleer ensemble on top of your original for extremely complex effects especially considering you can do further humanizing within the MIDI tracks as well as VI. 

All of this applies even more to Dimension, which functions as an even great amount individual control and complexity.  So with the various string ensembles within VSL now the individual line complexity has become really close to live ensembles. In fact, beyond some live ensembles in certain cases.

Hi again to all!

Well, I went to a retro/film vibe at the end, and took the theme from the Italian-Russian movie "The Red Tent". It apparently had two soundtracks, worldwide release with Morricone, and the Russian version by A.Zacepin - which I took for a spin.

First is the wet, processed version (also in a manner to suit the style of the original), and the second is dry, pre-panned and some moderate pre-eq, which is inherent in the MIR dry sound as well I guess. Well I haven`t switched the MIR altogether, as it would leave just a plain mono stock of violins dead center (not interesting).

I am far from satisfied with it - and I always struggle with the slow tracks more than lively ones, but some of the things I mentioned at the thread are there.

https://vlzmusic.bandcamp.com/album/dimension-violins

Thanks!

Vlad.

What does this post have to do with this thread? 

Could you elaborate more, William?  If you mean the thread - well, I kinda was the first to engage in discussion with Beat, and decided to bring a demo to back up my remarks.  If you mean the demo - well, my point was to show, that DS has some things to say about regular ensemble usage, and it wasn`t meant purely for exoteric "individual 8 tracks playing" stuff.  Will be glad to hear your thoughts of course, just that your laconic inquire left me unsure.

Yesterday I worked on a feature film demo consisting of a lot of prepared piano and 4 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos. This sound would never be possible with any other library or combination of libraries for that matter. Although I in the end would substitute the strings, the demo speaks for it self and can make the translation to my director! https://www.dropbox.com/s/pgzlq5cqdyqndb0/Full%20Contact%20demo%201v3.mp3?dl=0

@saxmand : I don't think any other string library I have (VSL or otherwise) could have done what you have done with Dimension Strings here.  Well done indeed.

@saxmand said:

Hi Beat. I think you original request was to hear some classical music, obviously so you could compare more easily. And it's a shame nobody have been able to give you that, but for me the extra "dimension" is not necessarily there. For me VSL is all about flexibility...

Hi Saxmand

Thanks for your effort and your very interesting example. Yes your piece seems really made for using the DS-Library.

Hi all

Thanks once more to all who helped here in a way.

The reason why I'm back now only just after a week: Things have changed! [<:o)] [H]...

I worked hard on a...  Chamberstrings - Dimensionstrings - demo ... and of course without MIR.

I used the same piece of music and played it with the Chamber library, with those of the DS-library and also with...

I used the same mixer, the same output Bus/Effects...

... and

here is the result:

All the important matters are explained in the video. Press "pause" for a better reading of all the context information.

!!!!!!!!!!!

IMPORTANT:

Keep in mind that this is a comparison of the sounds of all the libraries.

So the video doesn't show for example the huge flexibility of the Dimension Strings compared to the other libraries - specially in connection with MIR.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally the whole piece - now with a recorder as well: Telemann, D-Suite for Viola

Above all: Have fun!

Beat

Thank you so much for doing this Beat! To my ears there isn't a huge difference between Chamber and DS here, but there is enough to validate my own decision to use Solo and DS as the core of my chamber ensemble template (rather than Chamber and Solo). The ability to flow in and out of divisi is of course an added flexibility with this configuration.

Yes thanks for doing this example Beat.  I think I have a very slight preference for the chamber strings and/or chamber strings plus solo strings sound myself, but there isn't a lot in it.

What has drawn you to using the HOFA reverb over others available (say the hybrid or convolution reverbs in the Vienna Suite) if I may ask?

@Arbee said:

To my ears there isn't a [quote=nektarios]Honestly, I could not tell much of a difference between the pieces. :D

Hello

In addition to the video some posts above I can offer further more files for an even better comparison.

Here is a zip-file with the same music but with only one instrument per audio file.

So you will be able to compare 3SoloViolins, Ch-Violins, Ch+SO-Violins, DS-Violins, dito Violas, dito Cellos one by one so to say.

Edit:

I've decided to delete these Links because I don't want to play a library off against another.

CH-DS-Comparison-Kaufmann_mp3-files.zip (mp3-files)

CH-DS-Comparison-Kaufmann_AAC-files.zip (AAC-files)

Once more...

...the whole piece - now with a recorder as well: Telemann, D-Suite for Viola

Have fun

Beat

Thanks Beat, and to everyone else who posted a demo.

That's a fantastic video! I think I might have to consider buying Chamber Strings...

@Stephen Rees said:

What has drawn you to using the HOFA reverb over others available (say the hybrid or convolution reverbs in the Vienna Suite) if I may ask?

I own Altiverb (still 6), The Cubase ReVerence, VSL Hybrid, VSL Convolution, Pristine from Voxengo,... and also the HOFA-Convolution Reverb + a lot of additional IRs of course.

For creating rooms I most time only use the first part of an Impuls Respons (the Early Reflections). This for getting the depth without the more or less staic convolution tail.

So an Algorithmic Reverb is for the tail later on (over all).

Now HOFA comes with some IRs which are great for this first IR-Part.

In other words I always use the effect which can solve a problem the way I like.

Beat

Hello Beat,

thanks for the effort of doing this video, I consider it very helpful as a possibility to compare the sound of the libraries.

But what I do not understand, what this has to do with your own original intention to open this thread. You claimed that you never heard the "dimension", you said that you were missing demonstrations of the real capabilities of the dimension strings. And whenever someone chimed in to explain, that the VI Pro humanization section is doing well enough you repeatedly insisted in having individual tracks for each player, even with different articulations for each of them.

Your video simply uses the pre-built All-Player-matrices, and you use your own reverb solution. So the only difference to existing DS-Demos is the lack of the MIR Reverb. I'd like to note, that that is not far from the little demo I posted some days ago.

So, as good a comparison tool your video might be, I do not hear the "dimension" you asked for so badly in it either. I would be interested if you for yourself have come to a conclusion. Do you still think that applying individual articulations to each player would enhance the performance, or do you - now that you own the DS and know how they work - agree, that the humanization function is enough, as everybody already suggested before you made this demo?

@Beat: Yes thanks for those files.  Tremedously useful to have them broken down like that.  I'm still very drawn to the solo strings and chamber strings sounds (also the mix of the two together which sounds very natural and pleasing to me) over Dimension Strings in this case.

Thanks also for your explanation re the HOFA reverb.  The space you have created here sounds magnificent.  Detailed but open and spacious.  Bravo!